Stairwell
by Lennat
Summary: Asami comes to the unsettling realization that she is not alone in her own home. Contains thriller-like story elements and minimal violence.
1. Blankets and Blood

and then Asami is at the top of the stairs again and she isn't sure how, but she knows that it is the same as always, that nobody is there and that nobody has come for her. The walls are the same and hall is the same and she is the same, and she is alone, and safe, and so utterly _cold._

She sometimes wishes that the house would fix itself, that the invisible ice on the wood and tile would melt somehow, but it seems to follow her, and even if it retreated again into that beautiful memory called _summer,_ the cold would follow her anyway because it has crawled into her, it _is_ her and it is living inside her skin, and try as she might, she cannot cut it out.

She descends the stairs and keeps descending; she thinks she may descend forever until her foot finally touches down upon the first floor of her beloved home, the only home she's ever known. This house belongs her, to none other, for it is all she has left of anything (of him, of them) and she must be certain that _nothing_ about it will change.

She staggers through the building, one hand holding her left side (how it was hurting today, oh) and the other reaffirming ownership. She first runs her hand across the walls, hand-painted and gold-glowing and expertly erected. These walls are the arms that cradle her and her world, and she touches each one in every room before finding herself back where she started to begin again.

And as she does so (this time her fingertips touching the furniture and fireplaces and frames on the walls), she stumbles and clutches her side. She removes her hand and gazes at it. The stark brightness of the blood burns a hole of nostalgia through her, and she ponders _why_ , for is there not so much color in her home? Is there not so much sunlight, pouring in from the windows?

And that thought makes her hesitate and the pain grips her side at that moment but she shakes it away, because she thinks-knows-that the windows are as they ever were and she does not need (does not dare) to look at them to know that, because sunlight is pouring in, after all, sunlight always reaches through those windows. Why else have windows but to welcome the day?

She staggers to the infirmary, the infirmary that is empty but for herself and the bandages she needs. She unravels herself of the bloodied ones and lifts the clean ones in her arms, or thinks that she does, for the bandages sometimes seem as air to her: firm but not, soft but not, _here but not_ —

She thinks that she will maybe see a doctor soon about this, for she is sure that people do not bleed so frequently (all the time), that wounds should close up beneath so many bandages and good care, but she knows she should not bother, for soon she will not be alone, soon Mako finally will come home and he will care for her.

When Mako comes home, things will be as they should, and all her wounds will close.

and then Asami is at the top of the stairs again and she isn't sure how, but she knows that it is the same as always, that nobody is there and that nobody has come for her. The walls are the same and hall is the same and she is the same, and she is alone, and safe, and so utterly _cold._

The cold seeps so heavily into her that it lies even deeper than her bones, and she is suddenly too daunted to consider the voyage down the stairwell (it might be colder down there—but how silly, why would it?) because her legs are tired and her bandages wet again.

And so, today she does not descend; she turns and walks along the corridor and she walks and walks and she thinks she may walk forever until she comes upon the mahogany door with the midnight carvings. This is her room, her haven, and she dives into it and everything here is as it always is: her bed, made neatly beneath its canopy; her jewelry and silver hairbrushes, glittering at the top of her vanity (she does not look in the mirror; why should she? She knows she looks fine) but most importantly, there is her blanket resting on her rocking chair, so lovingly crocheted by her beloved's grandmother.

She reaches for it.

And reaches for it

and she reaches for it and reaches for it, but somehow cannot take it.

She tries to jump the invisible space; she slams herself against the invisible wall and strains against invisible restrains. She wails. She cries. She begs. She shivers. It is no use. Always, always it is just beyond her reach, just shy of her fingertips, and always the sweet warmth of the blanket remains unattainable.

 _But the cold hardly matters_ , she chides herself, for it will go away, would it not? Soon, Mako will come home and wrap her in his promised embrace and bury her in his loving kisses and share with her his gentle fire, and she will be warm, warm with him, warm forever and not ( _not_ ) alone.

and then Asami is at the top of the stairs and the walls are the same and hall is the same and she is the same, and she is so utterly _cold,_ and she isn't sure how, but she knows that everything is different.

Something is changed.

Something has come.


	2. Portraits and Portals

She descends the stairs in haste; she hastens and hastens and she thinks she may do so forever until at last she is on the first floor and she must be shaking the very foundation of house for she is shivering so violently. The cold inside of her is so intense that it is sprouting tiny tendrils, icy fingers that are growing outward from her core and rooting themselves into her viscera.

It is too cold, too difficult, to move. I must walk, she tells herself, must walk through this frost, for perhaps someone is here, someone has come for me, finally decided to come home; but still she is unable, and she realizes that it is not because of the cold. No, it is because of the urge to look over her shoulder, the desire to hide, the knife of air ghosting at her back.

She is frozen is fear _._

But that makes so little sense, for what does she have to fear now that her beloved has come home, now that his family ( _her family?)_ would filling the house again? What does she have to fear of Mako and his gentle fire and his warm arms and—

—and she opens her mouth to call out his name, but the chill of fear keeps her voice locked in ice because _she knows_. She knows deep inside of her (so deep, where the cold is) that Mako cannot be home (he can; he isn't), that he cannot have come back because that is impossible (but he will, he _will)_ , and that means that it is the same as always, that nobody is there and that nobody has come for her. The walls are the same and she is the same and the halls are—

 _—the halls are not the same._

She jars herself forward, clawing at the ice that is folding over her. For a moment she thinks that the hallway (no longer her hallway) may bar her from entry but she passes through the halls that are no longer her halls, and the walls that are no longer her walls though she does not know how, because she cannot (will not!) look at them.

The fear, the cold (whatever it is) is nipping at her heels and she quickens her pace. The cold inside of her churns and echoes against her ribcage, pulling her forward, and she runs and runs and runs and thinks she may run forever until she at last reaches the end, where the hallway deltas out like the end of a rushing river.

She knows suddenly why she was afraid.

The library is not the same.

She does not understand. The library was so full before, so bright with books and rich with warmth. The wood in the fireplace is gone; it is but empty brick and mortar now. Every lounge and sofa, once centered around the hearth, is now shoved aside into the corner and hidden beneath fluttering tarps of gray. Shelf after shelf lines the room, yawning their empty shelves at her, bare, bedraggled, barren.

It is empty. The library is empty, empty, and Asami cannot make sense of it. Were the books not here yesterday, did the fire not glow only a week ago? Did she not sit here so often with Mako, pouring over book after book, text after text?

But the room is not entirely empty, not completely, for there in the corner she sees that one of the portraits has fallen onto the ground. That will simply not do; the house must stay somewhat the same _._ The walls must be the same and the halls must be the same and the portraits must be the same for this house belongs her, to none other, for it is all she has left of anything.

So she stoops down to pick up the portrait (ready to wipe away any feathers of glass that were shed after its fall) and she looks at the face in the picture. Pain blossoms like a rapid rose in her side but that is not why she cries out. The face is her father, her father is here, and she is alone with him and she must run, she must run, SHE MUST **RUN**!

She does. From out the empty library and into the corridors and through the dining hall she flees, only to realize that Father is still with her, still leering at her from his place in her hands and _he mustn't be here_ and so she stops where she is (wherever she is!), grips him tightly, lifts her arm in the air and hurls him away!

He flies, and before she can feel relief that he is gone, she hears something break.

Invisible jaws gnash at her side and she puts herself on her knees (there is so much blood, so much blood) but she rises and staggers forward anyway. She has broken something. What? Ah yes, up ahead. She has broken a window. She approaches to look for damage and remembers too late.

After such a long time she has slipped, she has forgotten, she _has looked at a window._

She is cold, so cold, and deep down inside where that cold is, she knows that she will never, ever be warm again.

She screams.

She screams and screams and screams.

and then Asami is at the top of the stairs and she knows that she must run.

Her father is behind her, framed on the wall, his eyes boring into her back, and she does not care anymore if things are the same. The face in the portrait smiles at her with frozen eyes and she cannot not bear it, cannot stand on the stairs, not _when her father is here—_

and then she is falling, the stairs rising to meet her body like hungry teeth, and when she lands it is like the injury in her side is new again. Her wound is being newly made, the pain is newly blooming, and the blood is newly letting.

She tries to rise but she finds that she cannot; the cold has finally taken hold of her entirely, has finally frozen her blood and locked her limbs. She opens her mouth to perhaps scream or call for help (call for Mako), but all that exits her is a feeble sob. I am going to die, she thinks, die alone, alone and cold. There is no one to hear me.

But something does.

She hears it before she sees it: the low groan, what she thinks at first must be the sound of a dying old man (but that cannot be right, she is _alone)_ that soon breaks into a guttural staccato. She cannot see above her (cannot raise her head!) but she can see the shambling shadow drag across the floor she lies upon. She can see the crinkle of the long snout, the twitch of the torn ears. There is jaggedness inside of its maw, layers of it, like the base of a broken window.

She cannot see its eyes but she knows it sees her ( _it can see her!_ ) knows by the way its growls become snarls—

—and then she does not know how but she is running, running faster than she did from her father, and with each thunderous fall of her feet, more pain beats at her side. The wolf is behind her and hot on her trail, its snarls turned into roars, it must smell her blood, smell her terror, she must run, she must run!

She runs and runs and runs and thinks she will run forever, forever with this beast at her back, forever with the threat of its fangs sinking into her soft flesh, harping out what blood she has left. She bolts through her home, hall after hall, wall after wall, room after room, too frenzied to know where she is going.

The only room left ahead of her has no door, and so she bolts forward, and through the haze of fear she realizes that she has not been in this room for a long time, that she did not like this room, did not ( _dared not)_ enter it…

But the sharp growls of the beast tell her that it is nearly upon her, and she dives through the doorway.

She thinks she screams again, but the sound exits her mouth like it is entering water, muted and distant. She has entered the sunroom.

At long last, she has entered the sunroom, and the sunroom is all windows, and the windows are all truth.

Day does not drift through the windows, but neither does the night, for night does not shed itself the way the shadows cast from the window's glass do. Instead of fingers of daylight and illumination, the windows cast dark, ashen beams of truth, truth that nothing is hers anymore, that nothing is the same, that the halls and the walls and she, _she_ is not the same.

In this not-light, this anti-illusion, Asami remembers. She sees. There are no comfortable chairs inviting company and conversation—only decrepit and decaying echoes of them, some fallen crooked on rotten legs. There are no flourishing plants—only empty, knocked-over planting pots, their clay long cracked, deteriorating among the many layers of dust upon the floor.

There is no more life in this house. No more life, not even her own.

The wolf growls behind her, and Asami drops to her knees. She grips uselessly at her side, knowing it will not help the pain, knowing it will not staunch the blood. She is finally caught. Finally cornered. Asami lifts her head to face her predator, and as she does, the beast steps into the not-light, and she sees what she has been running from.

Not a wolf. A dog. White, but yellowed with age, like the pages of a book long neglected. It is huge, bearlike, but as it approaches, it limps on a front paw, where two claws are missing. Its long fur is matted, knotted, and as it tries to growl, it displays eroded teeth, and the empty cavities where its fangs used to be.

Asami feels her fear ebb away from her like driftwood, only to be replaced by an overwhelming vacancy. She is emptying out, all of her blood and insides disappearing, draining like a punctured pale, leaving only sorrow and exhaustion to fill her back up.

She collapses to the ground, among the dust and decaying clay. She closes her eyes, wishing for Mako, wishing for her warm blanket, wishing for the pain in her side to stop.

The dog approaches her, and when she does not move, it sniffs her. It tries to nudge her, finds that it cannot, and whines.


End file.
